Neither large nor small it goes all but unnoticed next to more important volumes as its cloth cover fades slowly from brown to green. Or maybe from green to brown. Maybe not fading at all. The ghost of silver embossment lingers on its spine, indecipherable. A commonplace book in a common place of books, with nothing to mark it out beyond a slight smell of damp.

Occasionally, curious fingers will pick the book up and absently ruffle the yellowing pages that fall open at random to reveal their contents; mediocre poetry or tedious inventories of belongings, rambling short stories or blocks of impenetrable legal text, descriptions of rain-streaked foreign shores or the simple musings of lifeless repetition. Each browser sees something different, yet equally banal, and each will sigh with disappointment before replacing the book and moving to the next. The book’s cover fades slightly more from brown to green. Or maybe from green to brown. The faint lettering on the spine is perhaps less clear than it used to be. Perhaps not.

More rarely, the book is plucked from its resting place by an inquisitive reader and opened eagerly at the first page. They read the publishing details, curiously blurred, and then the typesetting information (“Set in New Lethean, 11pt”). Their eyes settle on the opening lines and from then on their fate is sealed. As they read, they become thinner and the story of their life unwritten becomes yet another fragment of the book. The frustrated novelist, the list-maker, the writer of unheard songs. All of them stretch into lonely silence until they become so thin they disappear, another tale of the everyday added to the pages of the book’s collection. A tutting librarian finds the book days later, dropped on the floor, and dusts it down before replacing it on the shelf. Nobody notices that the spine’s lettering is now perhaps less faint, perhaps a brighter silver.

Of the book itself we know little more, beyond its existence. It is where books are, where books gather, but where that is could be anywhere. All we really know is that hook, the opening words that snare the curious or the unlucky. And those words are these:

They came down from the woods that night
those of frost, not firelight.
They snuffed out flame, snuffed out as well
the lives of those who quietly dwell
in towns and hamlets, farms and inns.
The places where mankind begins.
We’ve heard their whisperings in streams,
their faces only found in dreams.
Where masters older than our own
sit upon their oaken thrones.

Everyone they found, they slew
except a pair of children who
hiding underneath their bed
heard the woodfolk laugh. They said;
“Tremble not, we’ll leave you be.
Return this dawn to moss and tree.
Another night you’ll hear our song.
Years for you, for us not long.
As long as mankind bustles, thrives,
we’ll come to take your children’s lives.”

Everything needs a Beginning, doesn’t it, otherwise it’s just a Maybe. A per haps. But this isn’t that Beginning. This Beginning’s begun.

It began such a very long time ago, you see, that you may have missed it. You may not have noticed at all. It was very quiet, after all. Quite, quite quiet.

So there’s no need to welcome you because you’ve been here – right here – for such a very long time already. These books. These shelves. They know you now, they almost know you more than you. Almost known you. So you mustn’t leave.

And I’m afraid that you have so very many fines outstanding that you may be here some time, whether you like it or not.